Helen Maxine Reddy, often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", was an Australian-American singer and actress. For Disney, she portrayed Nora in Pete's Dragon, where she sang the hit song "Candle on the Water", and guest-starred on The Muppet Show in episode 313 and in the special "Mickey's 50".
Reddy was born into a well-known Australian showbusiness family in Melbourne. During Reddy's childhood, she was educated partly at Tintern Grammar as well as performed with her family on the Australian vaudeville circuit. Wanting to settle down, she with her aunt and married Claude Weate, with whom he had a daughter, Traci. Following her divorce to Weate, she returning to Performing in order to support her and her daughter, eventually winning a talent contest on the Australian pop music TV show Bandstand and moving to the United States.
After struggling for years to find success, Reddy struck gold with the single "I Am Woman" which went to #1 on the Billboard Pop charts. Throughout the 1979s, she had fourteen more top 40 hits in the U.S. with songs, like "Delta Dawn", "Peaceful", "Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)", "You and Me Against the World", "Angie Baby", and "Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady".
She also began appearing in movies, like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Disorderlies, and Airport 1975 where not only performed her own composition, "Best Friend", but was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female. Her television credits included The Carol Burnett Show, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Jeffersons, Diagnosis: Murder, BeastMaster, and Family Guy. In the mid-1980s, Reddy embarked on a new career in theatre with shows, like Anything Goes, Call Me Madam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Blood Brothers, Love, Julie, and Shirley Valentine.
During her later years, Reddy came in and out of retirement for concerts gigs and public appearances but mostly remained private. By 2015, she began to suffer from dementia and Addison's disease and passed away on September 29, 2020 in Los Angles, California.
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